'God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,' quips the pastor from the pulpit. The congregation finds this hilarious, but not young gay Christian Ben, who feels secretly shamed. Later, when a string of Christian counselling programs fail to 'heal' his homosexuality, Ben takes to his wrists with a razor blade. A trusted pastor attributes Ben's self-harming to demonic possession. Needless to say, Ben finds this distinctly unhelpful.
Another boy realises he is gay at around the same time that his father comes out of the closet, an event that causes an emotional rift in the family. Though still virtually a child, he feels a responsibility to repress his own feelings in order to avoid causing further damage to the family. He grows up to be, for a time, a practitioner of a counselling service that seeks to help gay Christians transition to heterosexuality.
The Cure aims to softly condemn the (primarily evangelical Christian) 'ex-gay' movement, which since the 1970s has sought to convert homosexual Christians to the 'straight' and narrow. It draws heavily upon the personal experiences of its interviewees, who speak frankly about their attempts to repress their sexuality, and of the emotional and psychological trauma that they have suffered as a result.
All feel their religious faith strongly, which makes their churches' disdain for their sexuality — something that they feel lies at the core of their being — all the more devastating, and the desire to repress it all the more desperate. One ex-Mormon reflects fondly on the faith's community and family values, before admitting to the severe depression that he has suffered during years of immersion in the ex-gay movement.
Director Corkhill's thesis is clearly that repressing a homosexual nature for religious reasons can lead to trauma and depression, while embracing it promotes growth as a whole and healthy person. Importantly the film promotes sensitivity and acceptance as the proper response by religious groups to their members who experience homosexuality. This is a commendable message that is unfortunately undermined by apparent bias.
Even viewers sympathetic to the message cannot miss the onesidedness. Of the six interviewees, five have had a negative experience of the ex-gay movement. The main interviewee is Anthony Venn-Brown, co-founder of the gay Christian network Freedom2B, and at the end of the film, several of the interviewees are seen wearing Freedom2Be t-shirts. It is as if the participants were hand-picked to support a predetermined